by B D Grant
One more woman walks out to join the small group of Rogues followed closely by a younger man. She glances down the hall as I stick my head out to get another look.
Cassidy’s eyes lock with mine. She’s been caught. She no longer has on her vest and jacket like we’re wearing. She has a deep cut high on her forehead. She stops as soon as she sees me. The man behind her shoves her behind the shields. “No!” she yells as I lose sight of her behind the shields.
“They have one of ours!” I yell.
Someone on the Rogue side of the shields starts shooting immediately following my declaration. I return fire along with the others. I inch out to try to figure out where behind the shield Cassidy is being held.
“Get back,” Kelly warns from his door. Lena, who doesn’t have a weapon, is behind him trying to look around him to see what’s happening down the hall. He notices and uses his elbow to push her back into the room.
“You fools. You don’t know what you’re doing,” Cassidy’s telling the Rogues holding her captive. They stop firing momentarily. I make a run for Glensy’s room that is closer to the shields. Someone’s running behind me. The Rogues are exiting through a door directly behind the shields. I suddenly see Cassidy from around the shield look at me. She throws her hand up as if to stop me. I keep running. I’m almost to Glensy’s room.
“Stop child! The bomb is about to…” She doesn’t get to finish as she’s dragged away. No sooner have I realized that she was warning me, the bomb goes off from behind the shields. Something hard hits my back and I’m thrown into the room with Glensy.
My ears are ringing and I am covered with debris. I wipe my eyes but it does little to help my vision. I feel lost, looking around the room. I run my hand over my head, then each arm, my torso, and then my legs checking for injuries.
“I’m okay,” I say out loud but I can’t hear myself. The ringing in my ears drowns all other noise out. I can make out Glensy’s figure through the dust in the room. He’s looking out the door, hollering something. The ringing in my ears fades into a muffled version of hearing. I rub my hands over my ears but it doesn’t help.
I hear him yell again. “Kelly!”
20
K. Vanbulance
I wake up to find myself in the back of a vehicle. It’s hard to keep my eyes open. Someone’s saying, “They were setting up bombs the entire time we were firing at them.”
I think back, trying to figure out how I got here. Running down the hall in the basement is the last thing I remember. Hearing a woman yell comes to mind but I can’t think of what she said. It could be a memory or a dream I’m not sure. I think about sitting up to better get my surroundings. When I move my arms to do so my right side sends sharp, searing pain throughout my body. I carefully lift my right arm to see what’s wrong. As soon as I see it wrapped heavily with bandages I set it down in hopes of easing the intensifying pain. By the window to my right is a fluid bag being held by a makeshift device swinging lightly. The line runs out of the bag, across my abdomen, and into an I.V. in my left forearm.
“He’s awake,” a female voice says close to my left. I look over to find Taylor sitting beside me. I remember her. Her father is laying on the other side of her. He’s in bad shape but she looks fairly up beat.
Hands reach over the back of the seat that’s above my head to check Taylor’s Dad.
A deep male voice says, “He isn’t awake.”
“Not him. I’m talking about Kelly,” Taylor says. The hands pop back over the seat and reappears above me. “Easy now,” Taylor tells me when I try to move away from the fingers on my neck. “He’s just going to check on you real quick.” The fingers are checking my pulse, I realize. A light flashes in my eyes.
“What happened?” I ask the hands above my face.
Taylor answers, “Rogues set a bomb off in the hall so that we couldn’t follow them—”
“No,” Lena’s interrupts her from farther to the front of the van. “They didn’t want us to get to the archives.”
Taylor is rolling her eyes. “You got all of their files,” she tells her.
“That was just files on the people in that hall. There was a whole other treasure trove we didn’t get to.”
“Anyways,” Taylor says loudly, turning her attention back to me. She gets quiet and leans closer to me. “You pushed me into the room with Glensy right when the bombs went off.”
Hands reappear inserting a syringe into my fluid line. “He won’t remember anything you’re telling him,” the deep voice tells Taylor. He pushes the end of the syringe releasing the clear liquid into my I.V. line.
She continues talking to me nonetheless. “You saved me. You were still partially in the hall when it all happened. That’s how you got burned and cut up from the shrapnel.” She touches my left arm gently where small cuts cover it. “Thank you.” A dark cloud moves in my vision, separating Taylor and I.
“You’re welcome,” I try to tell her but it comes out sounding like gibberish.
Taylor looks over at her Dad. “I just hope Cassidy’s okay.”
“Cassidy Sipe?” The deep voice asks.
“Yeah, Rogues had her in the basement,” she tells him.
“No, they didn’t have her. She was with them.”
“You’re mistaken. I saw them pushing her around,” she says defensively.
“Prisoners don’t carry handguns, kid,” someone else in the van says.
Taylor quickly retorts, “She didn’t have anything.”
“I hope for her sake you’re right,” the deep voice tells her. “Seraphim don’t take kindly to traitors…”
My hearing fades to a peaceful silence. My eyes close as the pain and the world evaporates.
21
K. Going to church
“Can you hear me?” Someone gently squeezes my left hand. “Earth to Kelly. I told you not to give him so much.”
“He needed it. He’ll come to. Give him a minute.”
I’m groggy but I manage to raise my eyelids enough to show whoever’s talking that I’m awake. Lanton and one of the men that were with us in the basement are standing outside the back of the car. The van’s back door is open and Taylor’s father is being carried away in a stretcher. “I told you,” the man tells Lanton.
Lanton’s relieved. “How are you holding up?” he asks me.
I sit up, with his help. My right side still hurts but I’m full of pain medicine making it less intense. The I.V. is gone from my forearm. The bandages still cover my arm.
“I’m alive,” I tell him as I attempt to flex my right hand. The discomfort increases but it isn’t unbearable.
“Atta boy!” Lanton rejoices.
“Can you stand?” The other man asks me.
“We’re out of gurneys,” Lanton explains.
“I think so.”
They both help me out of the back of the van avoiding my right side. “Who are you?” I ask the guy next to Lanton.
“I’m Rod. Do you not remember me?”
“Yeah, you were part of the group that I followed into the basement. Teller was the medic that stayed with Boston, but I never caught your name.”
“Ah, nice to officially meet you then,” he says before being called away by someone going to a car that just pulled into the parking lot. He’s a medic of some kind, like Teller. I look around but don’t see the others that were with us in the basement. There are groups of people scattered everywhere.
Our vehicle is one of many that are unloading people. We’re in the back parking lot of a church. A small cemetery is off to the side of the church grounds. My arm throbs lightly at my side. I can feel the right side of my face is also hurt. Lanton and I walk past an empty vehicle parked beside ours and I glance at my reflection. I’m shirtless with dried blood all over me. My arm and shoulder are completely covered with bandages where I got burned the most severe. My neck has some bandages on it but other than that my face only suffered cuts.
Lanton catches me smiling at my r
eflection. “Why are you smiling?”
“I lived through an explosion and I still look good.”
“It was a small explosion. It stopped us from chasing after them, caving in the entrance to that wing, not much else,” he tells me, continuing to walk. He doesn’t see me roll my eyes. Lanton directs me to the church’s front door where other students are entering. “Come see me when you’re done. I want to talk.”
Inside the church there are two lines of students down the middle isle and one line on either side of the pews. I get in the closest line. There’s a stage three in front of me. He’s holding a very young stage one who is passed out drooling. It is running onto the stage three’s shoulder. As we move forward there are very few people talking besides the ones answering questions at the front.
I’m not paying attention when someone walking out from talking with the adults in the front stops beside me saying, “Hey, you made it out.”
I have to process who it is next to me. His face has been washing so it isn’t until I look down at his blood spattered uniform that I remember him. It’s the stage two that we ran into in the woods.
“Yeah, don’t ask me how. I thought you were dead too. Right after you ran into the field house more people went in and shots were fired soon after.”
The stage two was a broken young man when he ran into me in the woods now he shoves his hands in his dirty pants pockets. “They weren’t shooting at me. When I got inside I had to hide because there were other people from our school inside. I was never any good at hide and seek.” I wonder if he knows he’s speaking to the world’s worst hider. “They heard me run inside and were walking in my direction right as the guys you saw were coming in. Before I was found they began shooting at each other. The right people won so here I am. They saved my life.”
“I’m glad they did.”
He gives me a weak smile. “Me too. Well… I guess I’ll see ya.”
“Yeah, man. Take care,” I say. He continues out the church. I kick myself after he’s gone for not getting his name or telling him mine.
When it is finally my turn they ask my full name, date of birth, if I know of any living relatives, and ask me to sign the bottom of a long list of names if I’m wanting to talk to someone about what I experienced today. I answer everything but refuse the sign-up form. The last thing I want is to relive what happened today.
As I leave out the church I pause at the top of the steps descending to the parking lot. There are more cars in the parking lot. Rod’s still with the medical team helping the injured. He’s working on a lady, stitching her wound. Another woman looms over his shoulder watching his every move. The lady getting stitches winces. A thin line of blood runs down her arm with a few drops hitting the cement.
The woman Rod is working on asks her friend, “Joni, are you okay?” Rod looks over his shoulder at her. She has turned pale in the blink of an eye. Rod digs quickly in his medical cart for something.
“You got any ammonia tabs?” He asks the female medic next to him who’s checking her patient’s blood pressure.
“All out,” she replies.
Rod looks back at the woman. Joni’s swaying a little. He drops what’s in his hand and grabs an empty syringe from his cart. He turns around to face her, uncaps the syringe, and jabs the short needle into her thigh.
Her glossy eyes suddenly come back to life. “Oww,” she say not aware that she just got stabbed with a needle until she sees it in his hand. Rod chunks the syringe in the red biohazard container below the cart.
“You were about to pass out,” he explains.
“Can you do that?” she asks, rubbing her leg in bewilderment. She looks at her friend when Rod doesn’t respond. “Can he do that?”
“He just did,” she tells her. Rod returns to stitching the wound. “Joni, will you see if there’s any water around? I’m really thirsty.” Joni nods obligingly and departs the medical side of the parking lot. She passes Lanton on her hunt for water.
Lanton is gathering a small group of Dynamar together. Each of them is holding handguns. They’re checking the clips and safeties. They walk to the only empty corner of the parking lot and stand there listening to Lanton. He stops talking when the cellphone he’s holding rings. He holds it to his ear all of two minutes before hanging up. He turns to the parking lot entrance.
Two vans pull in with no windows across the back similar to the others already in the parking lot. They park one behind the other, blocking Lanton and the others from view. The woman next to Rod from the medical team gets up at the arrival of the vans but Rod grabs her arm and whispers in her ear. She sits back down by her medical cart and calls the next person to get checked out. The drivers of the vans get out, still wearing their bulletproof vests. They rush around the vans where Lanton and the others are.
Besides Rod occasionally looking over at the vans no one seems to notice them. “Kelly. Over here!” Taylor calls out. I look around for her and catch sight of her head poking out from the around one of the medical vans.
I meet her at the back of it. “What’s up?”
“My dad wanted to talk to you before we go to the hospital.” She steps to the side of the van so that her dad, laying on a portable gurney in the back of the van, can see me. “Hello there, young man,” he says. His eyes now have some resemblance of life in them as they meet mine. “I want to thank you for what you did for me and my daughter. You’re a brave young man.”
“Anyone would have,” I tell him, feeling out of my comfort zone more so than I’ve ever felt before meeting a chick’s father.
“And modest. Let me shake your hand.” He offers me his right hand.
“I won’t be able to do that properly.” I lift my right hand for him to see the bandages then put my left hand in his right. He shakes is softly and then pulls me closer. His grasp tightens with a strength I wouldn’t expect given his poor health. He is careful not to touch any of my bandaged areas.
“Did you know about any of this?” he asks with a quiet strength mirroring his grasp. Taylor seems just as taken aback.
“Dad.”
“Hush, let him answer.”
I look from Taylor to her father. “I don’t understand.”
“The school, the prisoners, Rogues…”
“No, I,” I shake my head. Does he really think I’m part of any of this? My friend, the person I clicked with from day one was killed today. We were promised something better. If I had known about that school I would have taken Anne and anyone else wanting no part of it, and ran. “No, Sir,” I tell him solemnly. He doesn’t release my hand. He wants more. “I always felt there was something off, but I didn’t find out until today that that place was anything other than a school for Seraphim like me.”
He seems satisfied and drops his hand. “Taylor?” He looks at her, questioning. She’s staring at me as if she’s in a daze.
Behind me, coming from the newly arrived vans, a commotion catches my attention. I catch the glimpse of someone being dragged out the back of the last van as a girl pleads with someone. I can’t believe who it is. I break into a run. The pleas become a yell.
It’s Abby Heincliff and the person being dragged out of the van is her mother.
“Tell them you had nothing to do with this!” Abby screeches at Lia.
I hit D-mode without any effort. When I round the last van, Lia’s being held at gunpoint along with all the other captured faculty members. An elderly man is medically evaluating them. Lia receives one blow from me and she’s on the ground. People are shouting. I’m on top of her. She’s pinned with no chance of getting away this time. Abby’s screaming. This is the second time she’s yelled at me to stop attacking someone she loves. I keep punching.
Hands from all directions grab my shoulders and midsection. They manage to momentarily pull me back, giving Lia a chance to see her attacker. I fling myself at her when her eyes meet mine. The hands lose their grasp on me. Someone starts screaming nonsense. I feel pain in so many places but it�
�s only fuel to the fire raging inside me. She gets one arm between my fists and her face. I grab her arm and twist it behind her as I take a fistful of her hair in my other hand. I lift her head up about to slam it into the concrete when more hands grab me.
There are a lot more people around the vans now but I don’t care. I want her dead. The blood covering her face gives me no satisfaction if there’s still a pulse to push more blood out of her veins. People are yelling at me. Lanton’s telling me something but I can’t hear through the roaring inside my head. More people run up behind me. Abby’s begging is the first thing I can understand.
“Someone do something. He’s hurting her!”
“I’m going to kill her. Anne’s dead because of her!” I yell back, drowning her out.
“Kelly, calm down,” a soft voice says calmly. My inner roaring dies down but the pain remains. I try to charge for Lia again. Taylor steps in front of me. Another set of hands is added to the ones pulling on me.
“Look at me,” Taylor instructs.
I pull my eyes away from Lia. Lanton’s among the people that are holding me.
“You can’t do this,” he tells me.
Like hell I can’t. Looking up at Taylor the fight inside me dissipates. I can feel the dark burning that was just surrounding me wanting to return. I reach for it only to come up empty-handed. Maybe the numerous Tempero around are the reason for the sudden change but D-mode has never abandoned me like this.
Lia is being placed on a gurney. How does she get a gurney when they were out of gurneys for the victims? Taylor takes my good arm. All anger, pain, and sadness disappear with her closeness. Is she doing this?
“I got him,” she tells Lanton. He releases me and Taylor guides me away. Other captives are yelling now and Lanton’s team is forcing them to the ground, on their stomachs trying to restore order. Some are being thrown back in the vans. Taylor and I walk away from the chaos.
